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Wednesday, February 28, 2007

This is another version of my anachronistic Lion design, dating from the 1980's. I have a photograph of my original pencil drawing that I had to enhance, which darkened it considerably:

I thought that this was the best way to show the sort of look I liked "back when". For some reason, the protection is adequate and the roll period is quite nice at 15.9 seconds. The design turned out pretty well in Springsharp 3.0b Beta:

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

This is a design that I created in the latter 1980's for a 5in-gunned light cruiser. This is sort of a modified Birmingham class ship, except faster, with geared turbines and oil-fired boilers. This ship does not have the machinery error that I have been getting. The armament is 8-5in guns and 4-21in TT. The belt is 4in with a 2in deck. This is the Springsharp report:

Monday, February 26, 2007

If you allow the "Ideal Battleship" to have turbine engines and oil-fired boilers, the ship becomes really interesting. Oil-fired boilers seems to make a big difference. All the specifications stay the same, but the displacement drops. This is the Springsharp report from Springsharp 3.0b Beta:

One mistake that I made with the GB/CB/1905 design in 1971 was that the length was 770ft for a 25,000 ton Standard displacement (a displacement specification not created until 1921) ship that was designed for a 33 knot speed. For large, fast ships, length is critical, as the power required is so dependent on length. That is why my modified "Ideal Battleship" needed to be something like 586ft long, given the 12-12in guns and the complete 12in belt, and the specified 24 knot speed. 521-1/2ft was just not enough. As it is, Colonel Cuniberti's 17,000 ton normal displacement was grossly inadequate to provide sufficient structural strength. The size needed to be much larger, as well, so that adequate seakeeping could be achieved at a 24 knot speed.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

By changing the machinery to steam turbines, my expansive version of Colonel Cuniberti's "Ideal Battleship" is greatly helped. The displacement can be considerably reduced, still with the expansive dimensions. This is a photograph of the larger design:

I will probably do one or more tweaks to see what other improvements I can make, but this is the turbine-powered, coal-fired boiler version that can make 24 knots with a complete 12in belt:

Saturday, February 24, 2007

I was able to get Colonel Cuniberti's ideas to work in Springsharp 3.0b Beta, but the ship had to have a great displacement and large dimensions. Lightweight machinery was also required, but I was able to use his armament layout and a 24 knot speed, with a complete 12in belt. This ship is really a battleship-cruiser of the sort advocated by William Hovgaard. This is the Springsharp report:

Friday, February 23, 2007

I was re-reading Colonel Cuniberti's article about "An Ideal Battleship for the British Fleet" in the 1903 Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships. He mentions that he had done model-testing, in a tank, presumably, to check the propulsion figures. I am certain that he intended to use reciprocating engines for his ship, as that was really the only option in 1903. The boilers would have been coal-fired, of course. The main issue with the design is that the displacement seems to be inadequate to carry the weights. Colonel Cuniberti specified a 17,000 ton displacement, along with dimensions. We would expect that this was a normal displacement and the 27.5ft draught would be at that displacement. Even if we use extremely light machinery, that seems to be a problem. Also, he specified an archaic armour design, with a complete 12in belt, which is extremely costly in weight. Springsharp complains about stability, gun recoil, seakeeping, and structural strength, all major issues. We would be extremely interested to know if Colonel Cuniberti's papers have survived, including his design for this ship, so we could know something about his weight and stability calculations.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

My latest attempt to design Colonel Cuniberti's "An Ideal Battleship for the British Fleet" works no better than any other attempt. Perhaps that is an exaggeration, to some extent, as this ship has adequate stability, seakeeping, and the recoil is acceptable. The steadiness is substandard, and probably the only way to fix that is to increase the beam or change the gun layout. The protection is also reduced, as there is no complete 12in belt. The ends are 6in, in this version, done with Springsharp 3.0b Beta. This is the Springsharp report:

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

This template seems to work better, even though I liked the colors on the other one I tried. A feature of switching the new age Blogger layouts si that all the page elements are retained, although they got jumbled. I took about 15 minutes to get them into a better order.

I tried to design an anachronistic version of the torpedo-ram Polyphemus. Mine, given the later building date can make a maximum speed of 21 knots. The range is 3,200nm at 14 knots. My ship still has coal-fired boilers and reciprocating engines. The protection is a 3in deck. The ship might well have benefitted from torpedo bulkheads, but this version lacks them. This is the Springsharp report:

I have already switched Former Naval Person and Anglo-Dutch Wars to the new-style Blogger layout that replaces the old template. I will be doing the same to the rest of my blogs, including Dreadnought Cruisers. I expect to make the switch in a few days. This will be the second template switch that I have made, and both were driven by the need to stop jumbling the blog layout.

Monday, February 19, 2007

I have a new photo of a version of Colonel Cuniberti's "An Ideal Battleship for the British Fleet". I am still amazed that I have a copy of the 1903 Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships, the issue that has Colonel Cuniberti's article, with the scale drawing and specifications. I was just lucky and had the money when this issue came on the market. I really wanted the 1904 issue, but this is about as good. Here is my latest photo of the ship. I probably will be further revising this, as I am sure that I can do better:

I need to hack on my photo of Colonel Cuniberti's "Ideal Battleship" so that the look is more British than Italian:

I still like this photo, and I would like to try the design in the new Springsharp 3.0b Beta. I expect that I will be able to better describe the armament layout than has been possible with the 2.1 version.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

I was not particularly happy with this, but Conway's did not have a displacement or draft for the CSS Alabama, and I had not looked to see if I could find it online. This is my rather unsatisfactory Alabama Springsharp design:]

Saturday, February 17, 2007

I thought that I would like to try an American cruiser, the Wampanoag, as an anachronistic design. I had to modify my anachronistic gun list, first. I will post that separately. I added some protection to the Wampanoag to see if I could increase the roll period. This design is done with the Springsharp 3.0b Beta. I am starting to develop some facility with the program and like it much better than 2.1, which I liked a lot. I like being able to visualize the freeboard and having control over gun lengths. I am still getting the "drive" error message, however. This is the Springsharp report:

Friday, February 16, 2007

The Ger/CB/1905 design is so tight, that I needed to use the originally intended oil-fired boilers and lightweight machinery. Perhaps, if I had let the normal displacement rise further, I might have been able to make it work with coal. I very carefully used the original armour design, which is marked on a large scale drawing. I guess that I should be happy that it works under any circumstances, given our approach to design, when we did the work in 1971. The ship can make 31 knots and has a 4in armour basis. The armament is 4-12in/45 and 12-4in/50 QF guns. This is the Springsharp report:

Thursday, February 15, 2007

I made the Ger/BB/1905 design with coal-fired boilers, while the original concept had oil-fired boilers. I thought that coal would be more reasonable, given the date and country. This is the latest photo:

The ship carried 8-12in/45 BL and 12-4in QF guns. The armour basis was 10in with a 3in deck. The maximum speed was 23 knots. I was able to achieve a 6,400nm range at 12 knots. This is the Springsharp report:

I will continue to extend this list for other nations, so that I have more complete coverage of the 1860 to 1880 period. I really need to add the French, so that we can have anachronistic designs for them, as well, as they were major players in this periond. This is the current list:

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

I want to rework designs from our 1971 naval building program wargame in Springsharp 3.0. I wish that there were a more convenient way to display the freeboard diagram, as I really like that feature from the 3.0 Beta. Anyway, some of the ships I want to try are:

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

I went ahead got a Ger/CS/1905 scout cruiser design done with Springsharp 3.0b Beta. The main problem is that too much power is required for the size ship. I always tell myself the HMS Swift, a similar ship, could achieve up to 60 SHP/ton of machinery. This is the Springsharp report:

I have this design dating from 1971 of a fast German scout, along the lines that were proposed in Great Britain in 1912. I called my design the Ger/CS/1905, and in our naval building program game, I was going to build the ship in large numbers. I have a nice, very large GIF file, along the lines of what I had seen on a really interesting site. This is the low res version of it:

If you click on it, you can see the high-res image in another window. I want to try this design in the Springsharp 3.0 Beta to see if I can make it work better than what is possible in Springsharp 2.1.

Monday, February 12, 2007

I thought I would try my hand at an anachronistic design for the USS Kearsarge, the sloop laid down in 1861. I did some research about American guns in the Civil War time period and made some conversion decisions:

A nice feature of Springsharp 3.0, of which I just now took advantage, is that you can specify the length in calibers, as well as the bore diameter. The Kearsarge originally had 1-4.2in Parrott RML, 2-11in SB, 4-32pdr SB guns. My anachronistic design has 2-6in/45, 1-4in/40, and 4-4in/50 guns. This is the resulting Springsharp 3.0 beta design:

The Springsharp 3.0 Beta seems to be a nice improvement over the preceding version. The work is still moving forward and will culminate with a better speed-power calculation. The freeboard display should help me better understand what their program is doing and make better freeboard inputs. I have an image, but there seems to be a problem with the image size that I cannot correct now, until I get home, as I cannot upload files at work, as the control panel is blocked by the firewall. You can see the image here. I keep getting this error message in everything I do:

Sunday, February 11, 2007

I have revised my GB/CB/1905 design, done with Springsharp 3.0 Beta. I am getting somewhat better at using the program and had also decided to use coal-fired boilers, as that is more usual for 1905. The ship can still make 33 knots, with lighter weight machinery. I am still getting a Springsharp error that I do not understand. As you just saw, this is the photograph of one of the ships:

I lowered the freeboard by a foot, since there is plenty of seakeeping ability. This is the new Springsharp 3.0 freeboard display.
I did that to save weight. I also lowered the maximum speed to the originally designed 33 knots. I fixed the bow type to be a ram. I had wondered why I was not able set that as an option. This is the Springsharp report:

Saturday, February 10, 2007

I tried my first design in Springsharp 3.0 Beta. I wanted to see how the GB/CB/1905 designwould work. The one thing that I see is that despite the fact that I have the engine date set to 1909, the program is using 1898 for the drive date and is complaining, as that would a rather edgy date for a turbine-powered ship. I like the freeboard page and the gun pages, as they are an improvement over what we had before. The ship is a classic design from my friend Cliff, dating from 1971:

Friday, February 09, 2007

I thought that I would see what could be done with the Belleisle and Orion sort of ship. I made an anachronistic design from the Belleisle, that has turrets and 4 quick-firing guns (6pdr). The belt is a substantial 12in, although, like the original, the speed is too low. All I was able to achieve was 17 knots. The range is a meager 3,000nm at 11 knots. This is the Springsharp report:

Thursday, February 08, 2007

I tried my hand at doing an 1860's corvette as an anachronistic design. I chose the Juno, as it had fewer guns. I had to extend my system to handle the 64pdr MLR. The anachronistic Juno can make 18 knots and has a twin 5.5in turret forward and 4-4in guns on the sides, in mounts with shields. The range is 4,700nm at 12 knots. This is the Springsharp report:

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

I have this drawing of an anachronistic Shannon armoured cruiser design. One thing that I changed was to use my new system for choosing gun calibers for the anachronistic design. This version has 2-8in, 7-7.6in and 6-6pdr QF guns. The belt is 9in and the speed is rather low at 17 knots. The range is also short at 3,350nm at 12 knots. This is the Springsharp report:

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

I have been contemplating an anachronistic Devastation design. I finally made the design today, and was amazed at how well the Devastation worked. The anachronistic ship has 4-10in guns and a speed of 19 knots. The range is 4,450nm at an amazing 15 knots. This is the Springsharp report:

Monday, February 05, 2007

I wanted to design an anachronistic cruiser from the 1860's or 1870's. I chose the Inconstant, which was pretty amazing ship that was only broken up in 1956, after long service as a hulk. The Inconstant was originally an iron frigate, built to counter the American Wampanoag class ships. The Inconstant was designed by Sir Edward Reed and was completed in 1869. The original Inconstant was pretty fast, with a speed of 16.2 knots. My anachronistic Inconstant has a flush deck, four turrets, two with triple 7.6in guns and two with twin 7.6in guns, all distributed on the centerline at the same level. There are also 6-5.5in guns in casemates. My design has additional protection, as I gave it a 1in deck and torpedo bulkheads. The turrets and barbettes are 3in. This is the Springsharp report:

Sunday, February 04, 2007

The anachronistic version of the Achilles is more capable in many ways. I chose the 1868 armament, which was 4-7in MLR on the upper deck and 4-8in MLR and 18-7in MLR on the main deck. The armour basis is just 4.5in, but the speed is now 23 knots and the range is 4,900nm at 14 knots. The anachronistic armament includes 4-6.5in in twin turrets with 6-5.5in in two triple turrets. The other 16-5.5in guns are in casemates. This is the Springsharp report:

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About Me

I spent 11 years on active duty in the navy. Half was as an enlisted man and half as an officer. My Dad had interested me in the navy and ships, when I was young. I found that I was attracted to doing research, regardless of topic, although much of that research has been in the fields of naval and military history. My Dad was also an artist, and got me drawing and painting since I was three. Much of my work consists of portraits of military and naval historical figures, as well as ships and tanks.